Point of Order - A Discussion of Congressional Legal Issues

January 15, 2025

The JOR Memo, the Myers Case, and the Theory of Executive Privilege

To assess the executive privilege argument of the JOR memo, we should begin by drawing three distinctions which are either blurred or ignored in that memo (and the subsequent Wolkinson memo). These are (1) constitutional immunity versus (common law or constitutional) privilege; (2) the protections available to the chief executive versus those available to lower level officials; and (3) subpoenas to appear and provide testimony versus subpoenas to produce documents.

These distinctions are suggested by a passage from a prominent legal treatise that Roberts quotes:

Subpoena to Executive. It is well settled that public officials are not bound to disclose state secrets or to submit public papers to judicial scrutiny. Partly on this ground, and partly because of the immunity of the executive from judicial control on account of the tripartite separation of powers, it seems now to be undisputed that courts cannot compel the attendance of the chief executive as a witness.

JOR memo at 4-5 (quoting 12 Corpus Juris 896 (W. Mack, ed. 1917)) (emphasis added).

This passage distinguishes between the right of public officials to protect state secrets, which is a common law privilege, and the constitutionally based theory of “immunity of the executive from judicial control on account of the tripartite separation of powers.” There were several governmental privileges widely understood to be available under common law, but these protections were limited in scope and generally qualified rather than absolute even when they applied. See Jonathan David Shaub, Common Law Executive Privilege(s) (forthcoming 2025).

The passage also addresses judicial subpoenas to the “chief executive” (i.e., a governor or president) and opines (with some exaggeration) that it is “undisputed” such subpoenas cannot be enforced. The rationale given is based partly on common law privileges and partly on state and federal separation of powers principles that prohibit compulsion of the chief executive. But the fact that the chief executive is (or may be) beyond the compulsory power of the court does not imply the same for lower-level officers.

Finally, the passage baldly asserts that public officials are not required to submit “public papers to judicial scrutiny.” Again this seems to be a significant exaggeration, but there is language in some of the cases and secondary sources cited by the treatise which suggests a broad discretion on the part of chief executives and (sometimes) other high-level public officials to withhold certain types of public papers in judicial proceedings.

The authorities speaking to these questions are a mix of English and state cases, along with some 19^th century evidentiary treatises. No federal authority had addressed the issue as of the time of the JOR memo. Moreover, none of the authorities spoke to congressional proceedings at all. According to Roberts, however, Myers somehow supports the proposition that while executive officers “are subject to subpoena to testify before the United States House of Representatives or a committee thereof in connection with hearings for legislative purposes, the question as to whether the public interest requires them to refuse to answer a question or refuse to produce records in their custody or control is for their determination as a public officer.” JOR memo at 4.

As noted in my last post, why Roberts thinks Myers supports this result is somewhat obscure. There seem to be two possible arguments, which are discussed below. Continue reading “The JOR Memo, the Myers Case, and the Theory of Executive Privilege”

January 6, 2025

The JOR Memo and William Howard Taft

Having claimed that the power of Congress to compel the production of information has been established by Supreme Court precedent only as to private persons, Roberts turns to “the right of the United States House of Representatives or a committee thereof to compel the testimony of or the production of records by officers of the executive branch of the Government.” JOR Memo at 3. Key to the resolution of this question, according to Roberts, is Chief Justice Taft’s opinion for the Court in Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), which held that the power to remove executive officers is vested in the president alone and may not constitutionally be restricted by Congress.

Taft’s opinion, which was issued one year before the Court’s unanimous decision in McGrain, does not involve or discuss congressional investigations or the obligation of executive officers to respond to subpoenas or demands for information. Exactly why Roberts thinks the opinion is relevant at all is somewhat obscure (I will take that up in my next post), but nothing in its language or reasoning has any direct bearing on the issue at hand.

A more useful guide to Taft’s thinking on the executive’s obligation to produce information to the other branches is a book he wrote after his presidency but before his appointment to the Court. See William Howard Taft, Our Chief Magistrate and his Powers (1916). Roberts does not mention this book, but interestingly Wolkinson cites it at several points in his 1948 memorandum.

In one passage Wolkinson quotes prominently, Taft says:

The President is required by the Constitution from time to time to give to Congress information on the state of the Union, and to recommend for its consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, but this does not enable Congress or either House of Congress to elicit from him confidential information which he has acquired for the purpose of enabling him to discharge his constitutional duties, if he does not deem the disclosure of such information prudent or in the public interest.

Our Chief Magistrate 129.

This should not be read as a claim that the president may forbid his subordinates from complying with compulsory process whenever he deems it to be in the public interest. Instead Taft is addressing the president’s personal obligation to provide information demanded by Congress. This is confirmed by the ensuing paragraphs, which discuss several occasions on which sitting presidents successfully refused to comply with demands for information from Congress or the courts. See Our Chief Magistrate 129-30. These incidents, which also appear in the JOR and/or Wolkinson memos, include Washington’s refusal to provide the House with documents relating to the Jay Treaty (on the ground that the House has no constitutional role in the treaty-making process), Grant’s rejection of a demand from the House to identify executive acts he performed away from the seat of government, and Jefferson’s objection to appearing in court or producing documents in response to a subpoena duces tecum issued to him by Chief Justice Marshall in the Burr treason trial. None of these incidents involved a president directing his subordinates to withhold documents or refuse to testify in response to the compulsory process of Congress or the courts.

Continue reading “The JOR Memo and William Howard Taft”

January 3, 2025January 3, 2025

The JOR Memo’s Analysis of the Congressional Investigatory Power

Continuing where I left off, the JOR memo (as I will call it) begins by framing the question of the congressional right to obtain information from the executive as follows:

In considering this matter it must be remembered that our form of Government is tripartite, i.e., executive, legislative and judiciary. Each branch in so far as the exercise of its constitutional functions are concerned is independent of the other.

To permit one branch of the Government by affirmative or negative action to defeat the right of the other to perform its constitutional functions would be to destroy the very form and substance of our democratic government. Further, to say that one branch in the exercise of its constitutional functions can force the other to reach any particular decision or to perform any specific act, which under the Constitution is in the sole discretion of the other, would likewise shake the foundation of our democracy.

(emphasis added).

In addition to being rather dramatic, this argument is more than a little circular. A congressional demand for information from the executive only “defeat[s] the right [of the executive] to perform its constitutional functions” if one assumes that the constitutional functions of the executive include deciding what information should be withheld from Congress. This, however, is precisely the question at issue. Likewise, it is unexceptionable to contend that Congress cannot force the president to make a decision or perform a specific act which the Constitution leaves to the latter’s “sole discretion.” But this assertion does nothing to advance the proposition, which certainly cannot be found in the Constitution’s text, that the president in fact has the “sole discretion” to decide what information should be provided to Congress.

To illustrate this point, one need only look to a hearing held by the House select committee on the FCC a few weeks prior. At a July 9, 1943 hearing, the committee chair, the conservative southern Democrat Eugene B. Cox, decried the fact that President Roosevelt had directed the War and Navy Departments not to produce documents requested by the committee on the grounds to do so would be contrary to the public interest. FCC Hearing at 73-74. In Cox’s view, this action amounted to executive interference with the proper functioning of the legislative branch. In language which perhaps Roberts parroted in his own memorandum, Cox then stated:

It scarcely need be said that the whole concept of our American system of government under our Constitution rests upon the fundamental principle that each of the three coordinate independent branches of the Government, although checked and balanced each by the other, cannot be subject to domination by the others without the whole structure crumbling.

Id.

Thus, while Cox and Roberts agree that the Constitution establishes three separate and independent branches of government (indeed, it scarcely need be said), this tells us very little about whether Congress has the right to compel the executive branch to provide information or who makes the ultimate determination whether the public interest requires withholding of information in response to any particular congressional request for information.

Continue reading “The JOR Memo’s Analysis of the Congressional Investigatory Power”

January 2, 2025

Another Early Executive Privilege Memo

Referring your attention to a post I wrote a few weeks ago regarding the 1948 Wolkinson memo that I found at the Truman Library, there was one other document located in the same file. Unlike the Wolkinson memo, this document, to the best of my knowledge, has not previously been made publicly available. Predating the Wolkinson memo by five years, its argument is similar (with some differences that I will discuss) and thus may be the earliest iteration of what would become known as the doctrine of executive privilege.

The document in question is a 10-page memorandum entitled “Authority of the Congress to Compel Testimony or the Production of Records.” It does not say to whom it is addressed, but the author is identified as James O’Connor Roberts, and it is dated August 10, 1943.

The first sentence of the memorandum states that the memo will address “the right of the United States House of Representatives to require testimony of, or the production of records by, officers of the Federal Communications Commission.” This question undoubtedly was asked in the context of the then-ongoing proceedings of a House select committee which was holding a series of contentious hearings in the summer of 1943. See generally Study and Investigation of the Federal Communications Commission, Hearings Before the House Select Comm. to Investigate the Federal Communications Commission, 78^th Cong. (1943) (“FCC Hearing”).

As noted above, it is not clear for whom the memo was prepared, although it appears to be written from the perspective of someone interested in grounds for resisting the informational demands of the select committee. Since it specifically addresses the obligations of officers of the FCC, it may have been requested by FCC commissioners and/or attorneys who were facing demands for testimony and documents from the select committee. See, eg., FCC Hearing at 42-67 (testimony of FCC Chairman Fly and FCC General Counsel Denny). On the other hand, there were others in the Roosevelt administration, up to and including the president himself, who were concerned about the select committee’s investigation and did not wish to cooperate with its demands for information. See id. at 67-74.

Nothing that I have learned about the memo’s author so far sheds much light on his purpose for preparing the memo. James O’Connor Roberts was a fairly prominent and well-connected Washington lawyer who was active in civic and philanthropic causes. At one time he had worked for the federal government but he went into private practice in the 1930s. He might well have been asked to prepare the memo by someone at the FCC, the Department of Justice or the White House, but at this point it is hard to say.

How the memo got into President Truman’s White House files is also something of a mystery. Truman, of course, was not president or even in the administration in 1943. Roberts participated in meetings with Truman at the White House on several occasions in 1948 and 1949, mostly in connection with charitable or civic events such as the annual Christmas lunch of the Chatterbox Club (don’t ask me). Truman also appointed Roberts to serve on the Subversive Activities Control Board in 1952. Whether any of this relates to how the memo found its way into the Truman White House is anybody’s guess.

Anyone who has more information about this memo or its author is welcome to contact me. In the meantime, I plan to do a series of posts unpacking and analyzing the arguments made in this short but interesting document.

December 2, 2024

Truman, Wolkinson, and the Invention of Executive Privilege

Apropos of nothing, I was reading Judge MacKinnon’s dissent in Nixon v. Sirica, 487 F.2d 700, 729 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (en banc) and came across a passage I had not paid attention to before. In arguing that historical practice “firmly establish[es] a custom and usage that a President need not produce information which he considers would be contrary to the public interest,” id. at 737, MacKinnon cites the following episode from the Truman administration:

In 1948, following an abortive attempt by a Republican-controlled Congress to obtain certain information and papers from the executive department, a bill was prepared which, if enacted, would have required every President to produce confidential information even though he considered that compliance would be contrary to the public interest. President Truman thought that such a law would be unconstitutional and in preparation for the 1948 presidential election campaign he had a lengthy memorandum prepared (hereinafter referred to as the “Truman Memorandum”). The Truman Memorandum recites all the principal instances, beginning in 1796, where Presidents have refused to furnish information or papers to Congress.

Id. at 731.

MacKinnon cites a 1948 New York Times article which discusses this memorandum. The article, written in the midst of the Truman-Dewey presidential campaign, explains that “President Truman’s legal advisers have prepared for his use in the campaign a book-length memorandum designed to prove his right to refuse to deliver any papers or information held by him or his Cabinet officers to the Congress or its committees.” The article notes that the memorandum relates most immediately to controversies regarding Truman’s refusal to provide information regarding federal employee “disloyalty files” to congressional committees, but that it also may be seen in the light of “much larger issues”

The article does not identify the “legal advisers” who drafted the memorandum. It does, however, cite “[o]ne of the authors of the memorandum [who] compared the relationship of the President and Congress under the Constitution to that of husband and wife, in a marriage where laws cannot compel one to acquiesce to the other.” In this somewhat odd analogy the “ultimate disposition of a quarrel between them” could only be by a political “divorce” in the form of impeachment proceedings against the president.

After conferring with Professors Josh Chafetz and Jonathan Shaub, I concluded that the memorandum in question was likely an early version of the famous memorandum prepared by Herman Wolkinson, the obscure and mysterious Justice Department official whose work would later become the basis for the Eisenhower administration’s creation of the doctrine of executive privilege. Wolkinson first published his study in 1949 as a three-part series of articles in the Federal Bar Journal, but to my knowledge this 1948 version had not been made publicly available.

Judge MacKinnon clearly had a copy (perhaps from his days at the Eisenhower Department of Justice), and he indicated that the original was kept at the Truman Library. So I reached out to the very helpful staff at the Truman Library and they found for me the 102 page memorandum described in New York Times article.

As suspected, this is a version of the Wolkinson memorandum. In fact, as far as I can tell, it is identical, except for a few changes in formatting, spacing, punctuation, etc., to the version that then-Deputy Attorney General William Rogers submitted to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on April 10, 1957. See Freedom of Information and Secrecy in Government, Hearing before the Senate Subcomm. on Constitutional Rights of the Comm. on the Judiciary, 85^th Cong., 2d sess. 62 (1958).

Rogers described the memorandum as “a study prepared in this Department” and that is how I always understood the Wolkinson memorandum. I assumed that Wolkinson had been charged, as a DOJ employee, with researching the issue of executive privilege to assist the Department in responding to congressional demands for information during the Truman administration and that his work was re-discovered when President Eisenhower asked his attorney general for legal authority to justify resisting Senator McCarthy’s demands for information from the Army and other parts of the executive branch.

If in fact the memorandum was prepared for use in the Truman campaign of 1948, that raises some questions. How did Wolkinson become a “legal adviser” to the Truman campaign? Was he the sole author or were there others? Was he the source of the odd marriage analogy provided to the Times reporter? Why would it be appropriate for a career Justice Department lawyer to be providing legal assistance to the president’s campaign team? (I guess if the president’s “exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials,” as asserted by the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States, covers the attempted use of the Justice Department to overturn an election the president lost, he can also use it to try to win the election in the first place.)

Anyway, this all may be of little interest to anyone who isn’t an executive privilege scholar (and perhaps not even to those who are). But given the importance of the Wolkinson memo and how little seems to be known about it, I thought it worth flagging.

July 15, 2024

Bannon, Garland and Contempt of Congress: Part III (The Garland Contempt)

I know, I know. With all that has been going on in the political world over the last couple of weeks, a battle over congressional contempt seems like small potatoes. But I will try to convince you in this post that it is more important than at first it might appear.

In my last two posts I set forth legal background on the congressional contempt statute and discussed the contempt conviction of Steve Bannon. Today we will cover another recent contempt proceeding involving Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is refusing to comply with subpoenas issued by two House committees (Judiciary and Oversight & Accountability) for the audio files of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Joe Biden. Garland has asserted that the audio files are protected by executive privilege, in accordance with an OLC opinion (not publicly available) and a formal assertion of privilege by President Biden. The committees reported this contempt to the House (see here for the Judiciary report and here for the Oversight & Accountability report), which certified the contempt pursuant to 2 U.S.C. §194. A few days ago the committees filed a civil suit to enforce the subpoenas, and there is also an inherent contempt resolution which has been introduced regarding the matter.

The dispute relates to one hot topic of political controversy due to the nature of the underlying materials that the House committees seek. They want the audio files of the Biden interview, despite having the transcript, because they believe the actual recording of Biden’s answers will provide additional information relevant to their inquiries, including “whether sufficient grounds exist to draft articles of impeachment against President Biden for consideration by the full House of Representatives and to determine if legislation is needed to codify procedures governing the Department’s special counsel investigations or to strengthen the Department’s commitment to impartial justice.” Resolution Recommending that the House of Representatives Find United States Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in Contempt of Congress for Refusal to Comply with a Subpoena Duly Issued by the Committee on the Judiciary, H.R. Rep. 118-527, at 2 (2024) (“Garland Contempt Report”). Notwithstanding the somewhat vague explanations as to exactly why the committees need this information, it is apparent that they want to see whether the audio files shed light on the state of Biden’s mental faculties and, more specifically, whether the recording substantiates the special counsel’s finding that Biden is a “doddering old fool” (ok, the actual quote is a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” but I think my paraphrase is close enough for government work).

The Biden administration claims that the audio files are protected by the so-called law enforcement component of executive privilege. You may recall that my first post in this series discussed the 1984 OLC opinion in which the EPA administrator refused to comply with a congressional subpoena on the ground the doctrine of executive privilege encompasses open law enforcement files. The executive branch, however, has continued to expand the scope of this supposed law enforcement component of executive privilege. In a 2000 letter from the Justice Department to the House Rules Committee, for example, the department asserted that the privilege would extend to internal deliberative documents such as declination memoranda even in closed cases. And in cases like that of the Biden audio files, which involve neither open law enforcement files nor deliberative information, the department has nonetheless asserted executive privilege applies because disclosure would supposedly “have a chilling effect on high-profile witnesses in future criminal investigations.” See Garland Contempt Report at 28 (minority views).

Congress has never accepted the theory that executive privilege protects law enforcement files from congressional scrutiny, particularly with respect to closed matters. This theory, it argues, conflicts with the Supreme Court’s recognition of broad congressional power to oversee and legislate with respect to the Department of Justice. Thus, the Court has upheld the validity of a Senate resolution to inquire into malfeasance or negligence in the administration of the department, including prosecutorial decision-making:

It is quite true that the resolution directing the investigation does not in terms avow that it is intended to be in aid of legislation; but it does show that the subject to be investigated was the administration of the Department of Justice — whether its functions were being properly discharged or were being neglected or misdirected, and particularly whether the Attorney General and his assistants were performing or neglecting their duties in respect of the institution and prosecution of proceedings to punish crimes and enforce appropriate remedies against the wrongdoers, specific instances of alleged neglect being recited. Plainly the subject was one on which legislation could be had and would be materially aided by the information which the investigation was calculated to elicit.

This becomes manifest when it is reflected that the functions of the Department of Justice, the powers and duties of the Attorney General, and the duties of his assistants are all subject to regulation by congressional legislation, and that the department is maintained and its activities are carried on under such appropriations as, in the judgment of Congress, are needed from year to year.

McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135, 177-78 (1927). Congress contends that its power to enact legislation and conduct oversight regarding the Department of Justice, including its prosecutorial functions, precludes any presumptive constitutional right to withhold information of this kind. See Mort Rosenberg, When Congress Comes Calling 81-82 (2017) (arguing that prosecutorial discretion is not a core presidential power that can justify a claim of executive privilege).

Congress has a strong argument here, or at least it did until last week, when the Supreme Court decided Trump v. United States (2024), in which, among other highly questionable pro-presidential statements, the majority referred to the president’s “exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials.” One might hope that the lower courts will recognize the importance of allowing Congress access to information relating to the impeachment function since that is effectively one of the few checks on presidential power that remains. But I would not count on it.

This is not to say that a court would necessarily uphold the assertion of executive privilege here. The House committees are not challenging the decision to withhold the audio files primarily on the ground that executive privilege is wholly inapplicable. Instead, they focus on the fact the Biden administration has already released the transcript of the interview. This constituted a waiver of any executive privilege that may have existed, they argue. Furthermore, there is no legitimate confidentiality interest that can justify the withholding of the audio files under these circumstances, where the committees are attempting to discern whether Biden’s responses to the special counsel’s questions were the product of a poor memory or declining mental condition, on the one hand, or reflect intentional evasiveness, on the other. Garland Contempt Report at 12. Merely reading the transcript is inadequate because “[w]hile the text of the Department-created transcripts purport to reflect the words uttered during these interviews, they do not reflect important verbal context, such as tone or tenor, or nonverbal context, such as pauses or pace of delivery.” Id.

The rejoinders to these arguments from Garland and committee Democrats are essentially three-fold. First, they argue that the president has properly invoked executive privilege, which can be overcome only with a sufficient showing of need. Second, they argue that there is no need here because the transcripts are adequate to provide the committee with the information it needs and there is no reason for the committees to be scrutinizing the president’s mental capacity in any event. Third, they contend that the justifications offered to obtain the audio files are pretextual and that committee Republicans only want them to embarrass Biden before the election.

Andrew McCarthy finds these “rationales for stonewalling” to be “laughable.” He calls the refusal to produce the audio files “blatant obstruction,” and he argues that Congress’s institutional interest in obtaining relevant, non-privileged information “should transcend partisanship—i.e., if you are a member of Congress, you have a duty to defend Congress’s prerogatives, even if doing so may cause problems for a president of your own party.” He also points to “blind partisanship” by members of Congress as enabling the executive to take unreasonable positions, knowing that members of the president’s party in Congress will support him regardless.

McCarthy’s point regarding partisanship is well-taken, but he certainly has a selective way of applying this point. When it came to the Steve Bannon contempt, McCarthy’s accusation of “partisanship” was directed at the January 6 committee, including Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and by extension the 7 other Republicans who voted in favor of certifying the contempt. Since Bannon clearly had “relevant, non-privileged information,” and his claims of privilege were far more “laughable” than Garland’s, logical consistency would suggest that the “blind partisanship” charge would be most accurately leveled at House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, who is leading the contempt effort against Garland and who also led the effort to oppose holding Bannon in contempt. See Liz Cheney, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning 227-29 (2023) (discussing Jordan’s testimony before the Rules Committee on the Bannon contempt resolution).

Interestingly, both McCarthy and the committee Democrats draw an analogy between the effort to obtain Trump tax returns during the 116^th Congress and the effort to get the Biden interview audio files here. This strikes me as a fair analogy. I pointed out at the time that the argument for obtaining the tax returns was marginal (and required some suspension of disbelief to validate the asserted legislative need). As discussed below, the same is true of the effort to obtain the audio files here. The Democrats point out that Jordan was a vigorous defender of presidential privacy in the tax returns matter and has flipped 180 degrees now that he is investigating a Democratic president. See Garland Contempt Report at 39-40 (dissenting views). Of course, unmentioned is the fact that the Democrats have also switched positions in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, pointing out that everybody is a hypocrite does not tell you much about which position is correct. Continue reading “Bannon, Garland and Contempt of Congress: Part III (The Garland Contempt)”

July 1, 2024

Bannon, Garland and Contempt of Congress: Part II (The Bannon Contempt)

Steve Bannon, a close political associate of former President Trump who briefly served in the Trump White House in 2017, was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to a four-month prison term for contempt of Congress in connection with the investigation conducted by the January 6 select committee. He has been ordered to report to prison on July 1, which is today.

Andy McCarthy’s June 8 column on the Bannon case seems primarily aimed at convincing the sort of MAGA-adjacent types who might still read National Review that there was nothing untoward about the trial judge’s decision to order Bannon to prison. This decision resulted in what McCarthy euphemistically calls “gnashing of teeth” by MAGA leaders, including Bannon and Trump. Trump, for example, posted on Truth Social that sending Bannon to prison represented the “unAmerican Weaponization of our Law Enforcement” and then demanded, with his usual logical consistency, that members of the select committee themselves be indicted. Even more ominously, Mike Davis, the former Gorsuch clerk and Senate Judiciary Committee staffer turned weird MAGA personality, warned “Biden Democrats” on X that “[y]our glee will turn into terror after January 20, 2025” and “[r]evenge is best served cold.”

McCarthy points out (as I did to Davis) that the trial judge, Carl Nichols, is a Trump appointee and thus not a very likely participant in a conspiracy of “Biden Democrats.” He explains in some detail why Judge Nichols had treated Bannon fairly and, if anything, had bent over backwards to give him every benefit of the doubt. All this sounds reasonable to me and certainly much more plausible than the idea that Nichols is somehow involved in “weaponizing” the law against poor Steve Bannon.

Perhaps to make these unpalatable facts go down easier, however, McCarthy castigates the Justice Department and the select committee for prosecuting Bannon in the first place. This is where I have a serious disagreement. McCarthy’s position seems to be that Bannon was most likely guilty of the crime charged, but that his legal position was plausible or “arguably lawful” and that the proper and “normal” way to resolve this disagreement was through a civil action, rather than criminal prosecution. This position makes no sense to me. Continue reading “Bannon, Garland and Contempt of Congress: Part II (The Bannon Contempt)”

June 26, 2024

Bannon, Garland and Contempt of Congress: Part I (Legal Background)

National Review’s legal contributing editor, Andrew McCarthy, has written two recent columns regarding the House’s use of criminal contempt. One involves Donald Trump’s political associate, Steve Bannon, who has been ordered to report to prison on July 1 to serve a four-month sentence for his refusal to comply with a subpoena to testify before the January 6 select committee. The second involves the House’s vote to hold the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt for failing to comply with the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for the recording of President Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur.

I have some significant disagreements with McCarthy’s views, which I will discuss in future posts. Today, however, I want to provide some background on the relevant law, which is necessary for understanding the context of these disagreements.

Both matters arise under 2 U.S.C. §194, which provides that whenever a witness is summoned to testify or produce documents by a congressional committee and fails to appear, answer pertinent questions, and/or produce the documents at issue

and the fact of such failure or failures is reported to either House while Congress is in session . . . it shall be the duty of the [] President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House, as the case may be, to certify, and he shall so certify, the statement of facts aforesaid under the seal of the Senate or House, as the case may be, to the appropriate United States attorney, whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.

You may notice that there is quite a bit of mandatory language in this statutory provision, i.e., references to “duty” and/or what a particular officer “shall” do. I particularly like the part which states “it shall be the duty of the presiding officer to certify a contempt report and then helpfully explains, in case the meaning of “duty” is unclear, “and he shall so certify.” This reminds me of the instructions for the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

The underlying offense of contempt of Congress is defined by a separate statutory provision, which provides:

Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House, or any joint committee established by a joint or concurrent resolution of the two Houses of Congress, or any committee of either House of Congress, willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.

2 U.S.C. § 192.

On its face this provision requires “[e]very person” summoned by the authority of either house of Congress to produce information demanded by a congressional committee, but it also implicitly or explicitly suggests certain limits to this legal duty. First, the information must relate to a “matter under inquiry” by the committee. Second, at least in the case of a refusal to answer questions, the question must be “pertinent to the matter under inquiry.” Third, the default must be “willful,” which suggests that “non-willful” defaults (whatever that may mean) do not constitute a crime. Finally, it is well known that there are certain constitutional privileges which apply in congressional proceedings, the least controversial of which is the privilege against self-incrimination. It may therefore be inferred that the statute does not (and could not) make it a crime to assert a valid constitutional privilege.

The last of these raises another problem. Who decides if a witness has asserted a valid privilege? Put another way, what happens if a witness asserts a privilege and the committee decides that it does not constitute a valid reason for refusing to comply with its demands for information?

Continue reading “Bannon, Garland and Contempt of Congress: Part I (Legal Background)”